2014 World Tour Rider Age and Nationality

Friday, 3 January 2014

There are 507 riders from 41 nations registered with the 18 UCI World Tour teams for 2014.

The average age of a rider is 28 years and 1 month. The oldest rider is the 42 year-old Jens Voigt (Radioshack) whilst Cannondale’s U-23 World Champion Matej Mohorič is the youngest pro aged 19 and a quarter.

Here’s a look at the 2014 peloton in numbers. There’s a look at rider age, the “oldest team” and also analysis of how many pros come from each country and more.

Let’s start with age. As mentioned the average rider age for 2014 at the start of the season is 28.1, slightly lower than last year. This could be because a few outliers have gone, think Chris Horner and Stuart O’Grady but looking at team rosters some squads have been trawling the U23 scene to fill their ranks. Here are the 18 teams as ranked by average age:

Tinkoff-Saxo assume the title of pro cycling’s gerontocracy and have three of the peloton’s top-10 old croans with Karsten Kroon (37), Nikki Sorensen (38) and Matteo Tosatto (39). Radioshack-Trek were the oldest last year but Trek Factory Racing are rejuvenated… by the retirement of Chris Horner and Andreas Klöden but they still retain the peloton’s oldest rider Jens Voigt. Meanwhile Argos-Shimano remain the young pups of the pro peloton.

Rider

Team

Date of Birth

Age Today

Jens Voigt

Trek Factory Racing

17/09/1971

42.3

Alessandro Petacchi

Omega Pharma-Quickstep

03/01/1974

40.0

Danilo Hondo

Trek Factory Racing

13/08/1973

39.9

Matteo Tosatto

Tinkoff-Saxo

14/05/1974

39.6

Nicki Sørensen

Tinkoff-Saxo

14/05/1975

38.6

Pablo Lastras

Movistar

20/01/1976

37.9

Karsten Kroon

Tinkoff-Saxo

26/01/1976

37.9

Gabriel Rasch

Team Sky

08/04/1976

37.7

Juan Manuel Garate

Belkin

26/04/1976

37.7

Greg Henderson

Lotto-Belisol

10/09/1976

37.3

There’s a cluster of older riders who affect the average age. The mean age for the World Tour is 28 years and one month but the median is 27 years and seven months.

Rider

Team

Date of Birth

Age Today

Matej Mohorič

Cannondale

19/10/1994

19.2

Rick Zabel

BMC Racing

07/12/1993

20.1

Alberto Bettiol

Cannondale

29/10/1993

20.2

Niccolo Bonifazio

Lampre-Merida

29/10/1993

20.2

Sebastian Henao

Team Sky

05/08/1993

20.4

Danny Van Poppel

Trek Factory Racing

26/07/1993

20.4

Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier

FDJ.fr

30/06/1993

20.5

Boris Vallée

Lotto-Belisol

03/06/1993

20.6

Valerio Conti

Lampre-Merida

30/03/1993

20.8

Alexis Gougeard

Ag2r La Mondiale

05/03/1993

20.8

Note Jens Voigt was ranked as the world’s top amateur and the Peace Race in 1994 before Matej Mohorič was even born.

Rider nationality
Now let’s look at where the riders come from. Here’s the breakdown by nationality for the 507 riders;

Outside of the top-20 we have Austria, Luxembourg and Slovakia with five riders, Belarus on four, Czech Republic, Ireland, Lithuania and Sweden each have three, China, Croatia, Japan, South Africa, Ukraine all have two and there’s one each for Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Eritrea, Estonia, Finland and Latvia. Last but not least, a novelty for 2014 with Malaysia’s Loh Sea Keong joining Argos-Shimano.

The big change for 2014 is the increase in Frenchmen. It’s arithmetic given Europcar ride into the World Tour and so bring a lot of extra French riders into the mix to overtake Italy. The flipside is the exit of Belgian and Dutch riders, down six and ten respectively with Vacansoleil-DCM going and the same but worse for Spain after Euskaltel hung up for good, down from 50 to 33 riders. Australia go from 35 to 30.

Age numbers used above are decimal and not duodecimal, eg 25.5 is 25 years and six months and not 25 years and five months.

Note the official source data from the UCI website are incomplete but luckily ProCyclingStats.com doesn’t miss a beat, although I’ve excluded riders who have yet to turn pro, for example Olivier Le Gac with FDJ or Caleb Ewan with Orica-Greenedge

As for sharing birthdays, 18 February 1985 saw Fabio Sabatini, Christian Salerno and Jos Van Emden born. 21 February 1985 is also a day for three riders, although with twins, the Velits brothers and Christian Meier.

Harsh about the French? Doesn’t it say more about the poor economic health of pro cycling than anything? The concentration of French (ASO taking the lead) money? More about the lack of non-French money interested in investing in top level pro cycling?

Does it look like classics riders & domestiques can prolong their career longer than grand tour top 10 riders? Or have all the GT riders been removed from their profession for other reasons? I suspect competing for multiple grand tours has a more damaging effect than competing as a one day specialist, so they retire earlier for one of several reasons, worn out, have enough money to retire comfortably, or banned.

Another pedant alert!
I’m loving the use of the 2 decimal points for rider nationalities. I scrolled down in hope that you had allocated parts of riders to different countries! I was thinking of say Chris Froome: Britsh 50% / Kenya 50% or Bradley Wiggins: British 25%, Belgium 50%, Australia 25%.